HomeMy WebLinkAbout3.2.a - John Stonebraker - comment re_ 3.2.a GovQA contractFrom:John S.
To:Clerk of the Board
Subject:comment re: 3.2.a GovQA contract
Date:Tuesday, November 18, 2025 8:35:55 AM
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The standard contract boilerplate and scope of work for this extension
have been correctly uploaded as formatted text rather than images of
text.
Thus this portion of this agenda will be a searchable PDF per I(A)12,
enabling automated retrieval in the future. The workflow that generated
this should be replicated going forward. Because the original 2022
contract
is attached as unsearchable images of text, it is unnecessarily tedious
to compare the two for differences in terms.
Granicus has not been the most reliable software vendor, notably
allowing the county's granicusideas platform to be overrun by Russian
spambots. And failing to facilitate export of agendas and written public
comment when the county belatedly migrated to CivicClerk. It is
reasonable to seek an automated Solution to streamline Public Records
Act requests. It is unfortunate that the provider must be Granicus.
Again, this is the sort of software many other California jurisdictions
require, and collaboratively commissioning a public rather than
proprietary Solution would save tax dollars over the long run.
The quoted price of $1200/TB/year is several times above market for
frequently accessed cloud storage and orders of magnitude above market
for archival. I surmise other line items are similarly inflated.
Item 1(B)11 refers to City rather than County business hours. This same
blunder appears in the 2022 contract which was somehow approved. I
surmise the GovQA source code includes similar cut-paste errors,
compromising performance while evading public scrutiny, as the County
continues to rely on unreliable black-box software.
John Stonebraker
Magalia, CA